Sam Hughes (born 1983), known online as and publishing under the pen name qntm (pronounced "quantum"), is a British programmer and science fiction author. Hughes' short stories include "Lena", about the first digital snapshot of a human brain. His serial novels include Ra and Fine Structure. He has also written for the SCP Foundation wiki; his novel There Is No Antimemetics Division began as an entry on the wiki. In 2024, Del Rey Books acquired UK and Commonwealth rights to the book, while Ballantine Books acquired the US rights.
In 2022, Hughes created Absurdle, a variant of Wordle wherein the word changes with every guess, while still remaining true to previous hints. The Guardian described it as "the Machiavellian version of Wordle", and Hughes described it as an "experiment to find the most difficult [...] variant of Wordle", comparing it to one of his previous projects, the Tetris variant Hatetris.
There Is No Antimemetics Division was nominated for the 2026 Arthur C. Clarke Award.
Selected works Serial novels Title Began Completed Published as a single work Ed 2003 2005 2013 Fine Structure 2006 2010 2018 Ra 2011 2018 2018 There Is No Antimemetics Division 2008 2020
Anthologies Title Year Role Notes Valuable Humans in Transit and Other Stories 2022 Author The Big Book of Cyberpunk 2023 Contributor Contributed the short story "Lena"
Video games Title Year Platform Hatetris 2010 Web game Absurdle 2022 Web game
References
External links
, Hughes' official website
qntm's author page at the SCP Foundation wiki